Search

Hold onto your lactose intolerance, lovers, because it’s the first Instant Restaurant for 2014 and the cheese-makers are up to bat!

So we already got a bit of an introduction to them in the MKR preview so you already know that Jason and Annie are from NSW, live on a farm and that Jason has an compulsive desire to root cheese, livestock and Annie, in that order. Rico, being the filthy little bitch he is, wonders just how far Jason’s affection for cheese goes, and whether the pungent stuff under his wang-hood will make an appearance on the menu.

Thankfully for the other diners, the menu seems to contain only traditional cheeses and neither Jason nor Annie seem particularly stressed as they ride a kangaroo into town to shop for their big night. First up is a stop at small-town Coles and Rico reckons good luck to being able to find more than one brand of dogfood because not even that creepy little perve, Curtis Stone, would be seen dead in this kind of backwater and the cut-outs of him are probably old enough to still have a jawline.

Anyhoo, after Coles and a quick stop at the butcher, it’s off to what seems to be their own cheese factory to grab a bucket load of their secret dessert ingredient: labneh. For those of you who don’t know (me, Rico, the dog and everyone else who isn’t telling total LIES), labneh is a yoghurt cheese mess that, according to Jason, is going to give their white chocolate cheesecake a nice sour flavour that will set it apart from other cheesecakes because it’s fucking DISGUSTING. But there’s a problem, because some equally sick fucker has stolen some of Jason precious labneh to make fudge and Jason is left with no choice other than to open his cheese hole and unleash a tsunami of fury that has Rico blushing into his port and muttering that it’s only episode one and the last thing Jason wants is to rage-peak too early.

Annie – though only married to Jason a short time – seems adept in dodging all the F-bullets and tells him not to worry and that they’ll just top that shit up with a bit of cream cheese, and if they don’t have any cream cheese they’ll just rob the guts of a couple of Sara Lees! Jason seems to find some comfort in this idea and, before we know it, he’s taken the nearest employee out of a headlock and headed back to the farm.

On their arrival back, it’s set-up time and Jason proudly announces to the cameras that they’ve decided to call their Instant Restaurant The Milk Bone because cheese has milk, cows have milk, and he can’t seem to keep his dick out of either. Annie agrees that it’s a great name and that the hay is a great touch because slutty people always seem to get caught rolling in it and from the look of some of the contestants at MKR HQ, it’ll probably get a good workout.

Prep time starts and it’s all about the fucking labneh and whether the labneh will be labneh-y enough and how it’s fucking SHIT that they didn’t get as much labneh as they wanted because he – Jason – loves to have a bit of LABNEH left over to wank himself into a frenzy. Rico reckons his dearest wish is for the judges to announce a labneh ban, but that he suspects this shit is the new quinoa and that we’ll be hearing it come out of the mouths of every amateur cook and their microwave illiterate dog.

Moving on and Annie is worried that Jason is taking his sweet time and why the hell can he do it during a crucial round in a competition and not in the bedroom? Jason seems to sense Annie’s preoccupation and launches into a special rendition of Sexy Back that Rico reckons could realistically be used as the national anthem in Hell – or Germany.

Out on the farm, though, the other contestants are arriving and it’s a procession of hooves shoved into slutty shoes with unimpressed livestock looking on. Up to the door they come and after a brief double-take at wife Deb’s SURPRISE! eyebrows, Jason and Annie invite everyone indoors to take their places and open up the lines of judgement.

This is the point where the producers give us a little footage of the other teams and first up to be delved into with a partially washed fist are WA girls, Chloe and Kelly! Kelly, as we already know, is a seasoned traveller notorious throughout Europe for dining at Michelin Star restaurants, scaring the waiters with her joker-esque smile, and then doing a runner before paying the bill. Chloe is her clothes-loving sidekick and apparently thought Kelly was a ‘skank’ when they met and has now downgraded that assessment to BFF.

Naturally, we are supposed to hate their guts.

Next up for the grill are the alleged twins, whose names Rico reckons we will bother to learn if they live up to their whoreish presentation. Twin 1 is brunette, thin and minus a head resembling a robber’s dog’s marrowbone-flavoured reflux. Twin 2 is bleach-blonde, dumpy and clearly not a fan of Pro-Active. According to Blonde Twin, they’re ‘not just pretty twins, they can cook too’ and Rico howls so hard the dog makes a heckled-up break for the backyard to defend its territory. According to the footage, they love market stalls and making dessert and one day hope to build an empire on the strength of a single brain and a fuck-load of rich-man humping.

‘The FUCK did you just say bitch? At least I’m a JESSICA – you’re a fucking ASHLEE!’

‘Don’t you mean I’m a J-Lo and you’re a PITBULL?! AND I DON’T MEAN THE GODDAMN RAPPER!’

Next up are Canberra couple, Andrew and Emilia – Andrew being a poet and Emilia being apparently unaware that her hairdresser is fucking with her. Andrew, whose buoyancy and excess of hand gestures has Rico’s gaydar humming Fernando, reckons he was Emilia’s ‘first’, a statement that has Emilia telling him that he ‘can’t say that’ because she serviced an entire rugby team the night before their first root.

Moving on and it’s sexually charged Older Male PE Teachers, Paul and Glen, whose wives are best friends, kids are best friends, and who love taking Man Breaks to Bali to surf, eat and generally break the land speed record into each other’s pants. Rico reckons lots of people would look at them and probably think Brokeback Mountain, be he sees The Wiggles and a hell of a lot of backstage lubricant.

And, finally, it’s Perpetually Shocked Deb and her traditionally aging husband, Rick, who’ve been married for thirty years, love to play street cricket and operate on the hilarious notion that Deb is the ‘good-looking one’. Lopsided Emilia struggles to find something non-botox-related to say and manages that they ‘must have been cooking for a long time!’ and by ‘cooking’ she doesn’t mean ‘meth’ because she’s sure ‘meth face’ isn’t the reason Deb looks like an overly filled plastic bag with eye-holes.

Anyhoo, enough of that because back in the kitchen the entrée is underway, and out in the yard Pete and Manu are coming! In they come and reach-for-the-sky-face Deb reckons there’s no way she’s passing up this little opportunity to let Pete and Manu know she’d totally cup their balls if her palsy wasn’t giving her gip. Everyone around the table laughs with the exception of Manu, who looks interested, and Petey, who looks like he’d order instant death, if only it was on the menu.

From there the talk turns to the cheese-heavy menu and Chloe uses this opportunity to tell everyone that goat cheese makes her gag harder than a ginger pube and that she’ll really try and eat it, just don’t expect to avoid the over-spray.

In the kitchen and things are pretty dull because, before we know it, they’re trotting out the entrée and watching as Petey and his tubby French friend turn a more expressionless shade of Nicole Kidman, before finally admitting that it’s actually rather good.

With the good news ringing in their cheese-loving ears, Jason and Annie head back to the kitchen leaving Chloe to milk her moment for all she’s worth and then gush that she’s ‘proud of herself’ for keeping it down, even though a massive spew would have totally upped her Google searches.

Back to Jason and Annie and Annie is screaming at Jason to stop treating the peppermill like a fire hose, while Jason bickers with Manu about the advantages of cooking the steak to order, versus telling those fuckers to eat what’s put in front of them. Jason reckons that anyone liking a well-done steak may as well hang out their flag and declare themselves an Indonesian Abattoir worker, because what dead cow wants to be cooked within an inch of its – errrr – death? Manu reckons he’s a total fuckstick and that the chances that codger Rick and Michelin Whore, Kelly, will agree on a cook of steak are up there with him getting a blowjob from a Kalgoorlie prostitute with his fiancee’s approval. But Jason has his mind made up because since when did logic, reason or giving a fuck have a place on MKR?

Out in the dining room and the editing team are having a fun time making us think that Chloe and Kelly, and Blonde Twin and Brunette Twin, are just a saloon and a hot Mexican away from Slutfight at the OK Corale. Rico reckons he just doesn’t see it and that the only way he can see them really getting into it is if Chloe hurks up the next cheese course and comments on the resemblance.

But let’s not get bogged down, because here comes the main! With Jason freaking out on the sidelines, Manu cuts into his steak to reveal – shock horror! – it’s rare rather than medium-rare! Still, he chugs it down, dipping it in the bucket of blue-cheese sauce that country Mensa-member Annie had a sexy dream about and then failed to wake up from.

Petey, who has a normal-sized sauce receptacle, is pissed because he hasn’t spent his life getting heels sewn into his trainers just to come out looking like David to a fat French Goliath, and these country bumfuckers have NO IDEA that this is just the kind of comparative dick metaphor that Manu lives for.

All that aside though, both judges are happy – Petey because he likes his steak rare and Manu because now everyone knows that Petey has a tiny penis. Unfortunately for Jason and Annie, though, both judges are unanimous on the lack of seasoning – a sentiment echoed around the table, particularly by Kelly who seems depressed they aren’t in Argentina because she could swear they passed a crashed plane of high-school aged cannibals in the Andes on the way there.

Back in the kitchen and the bumpkins are celebrating because there’s only dessert to go and it’s chock-full of their precious labneh! Rico reckons that, after this episode, if he ever comes across labneh in a dark alley he will give it Swiss citizenship courtesy of a sharp knife and then pay a one-eared tomcat to mark it like a lost Siamese.

It’s during this rant, however, that Rico realises this is a BAKED cheesecake and that, once again, he’s being forced to bear witness to a beautiful thing scalded by the fires of sheer fuckery. I console him as best I can, but with the dog still in the backyard I can’t even re-enact the Rebecca Gibney Advil ad that usually has Rico in stitches.

Out comes the cheesecake and, because Annie isn’t convinced the judges understand just how aesthetically-challenged they are, she’s painted NSW on each plate in Cottees syrup and is looking forward to her standing ovation. Manu comments that the labneh isn’t totally disgusting but the next time he sees a state skid-marking a dessert plate he’ll send the offender’s head to Colin Fassnidge with the instructions; ‘root this as hard as you can’. Petey reckons it’s a bit rich calling this a white chocolate and raspberry cake because the ingredients aren’t even touching and the only thing sourer than the flavour is Manu’s fiancée’s face when she finally sees his birth certificate.

What the other teams around the table thought about it, I have no idea, because the dog chose that moment to bolt in from the garden with a chocolate cling-on attached to its bum, and it took both Rico and I all of our drunken faculties to force it back into the yard and perform an emergency turdectomy.

Scoring time was rather typical for the first Instant Restaurant of the competition and Rico reckons it’s amazing how none of these bastards have learned to low-score straight out of the barrel, because 82 for three courses of cheese – even if one of them was fucking LABNEH – is so going to repeat on them towards the end of the round.

In typical Manu tradition, he ends the night by talking about how Annie and Jason have raised his bar so high it’s making a foreskin-shaped indent in their nice kitchen table, while Petey rolls his eyes and mutters into his collar-mike that he’ll be sharing a limo home with this fucker as soon as hell freezes over or Jesus stops touching up lepers.